| Question Title | Posted By | Question Date | ||||||||||||||
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| Which prayer should be recited | Chas | Tuesday, March 9, 2010 | ||||||||||||||
Question: If a person works the graveyard shift as is used to praying compline and morning prayers every night, should he pray compline the night prayers in the morning when he actually goes to bed lets say around 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning and then pray the morning prayer around 4:30pm when he gets ups to "start his day"? Which prayer should he recite at those times? How should that person say his prayers when his job requires that he switch from day, to graveyard shifts. This is especially for policemen who change shifts quite often. Thanks and God Bless |
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| Question Answered by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM
Dear Chas: The Offices are designed for the part of the day in which they are intended. Thus, they are not to be said at other times. But, there are offices all through the day, and two which can be said anytime. In terms of graveyard shift, the Morning Prayer can be said when you get off work. Compline can be said just before going to bed, no matter what time that is. If you have the four-volume edition, you can say the Office of Readings anytime of the day. When you work day shift, you may be able to pray Morning and Evening Prayers, and then Compline before bed. On a mid-day shift, if you are up before 8:30am you can say Morning Prayers. If not, then you can say the Day Prayer -- Midmorning, Noon, Midafternoon -- as applicable. Then Compline before bed. In general, what we teach our people is the following schedule possibilities:
_ These are just guidelines, but the point is that the respective Offices must be said during the time of the day for which they are intended. Thus, you can pick whichever Offices that correspond with your schedule, with Compline whenever you go to bed, even if that is 8am. God Bless, |
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